The City of Temporary Light

I’m flying to California on Tuesday for Alvin’s brother’s wedding.  I get to be a groomsman and wear a rented tux for the first time; it’s all very exciting.

My only regret really is that I’ll be missing most of the Festival of Lights in Berlin, an event that I’ve developed a strange nostalgia for, if it is possible to have nostalgia for something that you experienced for the first time last year.

During this Festival, which doesn’t really come with the usual German festival trappings like bratwurst and gluhwein and annoyed parents but somehow gets to be called a festival anyways, the city’s major landmarks are lit up by so-called “light artists.”  The website promises, and let’s just use the stilted English here, to “turn Berlin into a sparkling metropolis with a firework of illuminations and events for two weeks.”  The landmarks “will be staged impressively by means of light, events, projections and fireworks.”

It’s really all quite nice, the TV tower in blue, the Brandenburg Gate in reds and green, the Victory Column in yellow.  And as the festival more-or-less coincided with my arrival in Berlin last year, I didn’t know it was a special thing for a festival.  I’d take dark morning runs through Tiergarten, past romantically floodlit statues and monuments, and it was all somehow magical, until of course the Festival ended, everything turned that rather particular shade of Berlin gray, and I realized that the whole thing was a big put-on. 

So my nostalgia is somehow inextricably bound up with disappointment and loss.  Which is, I guess, what makes it nostalgic to begin with.

Brush With Greatness

Today is probably the first time I’ve gotten a chance to be an eyewitness to the setting of a world record.

I know what you’re thinking.

Neat.

But you’re probably thinking it in a disinterested, ironic way.

Still.  I took a look at the route map for the Berlin Marathon a couple days ago, wondering vaguely whether I should go and cheer as the runners went by.  Such was the depth of my enthusiasm that when I saw that the route went right by my front door, I still debated the pros and cons.

In the end, I let my subconscious decide, going to bed without setting an alarm.  When I woke up at 8:48, mere minutes before the marathon was scheduled to start, I took it as a sign, put on my fuzzy UCLA sweatshirt, and toddled downstairs.

I kind of thought I’d be pushing my way out my front door into a crowd, but it was just me and this Asian couple with cameras.  Since my apartment is on Kilometer 4, we didn’t have to wait long to start snapping photos, and there he was, running in a cocoon of siren lights, the legendary Haile Gebrselassie, certainly up there on my list of favorite Ethiopian Hailes.  Doing his final sprint to the finish line, poor guy, didn’t anybody tell you that there’s still 36 kilometers and most of Berlin yet to see?

After watching also-rans for a while, I went back up to my apartment, and not too much later, discovered online that Haile had beaten the previous world record (also set in Berlin, since we don’t have topology here) by half a minute. 

Yup.  That’s right.

Neat.

(P.S.  the original title for this blog entry was “Heil Haile”… just checking, that would offend, like, everybody, right?)

Cuckooco for Rococo

My parents and brother are in town now, staying with me.  I’m thinking about just making it official and applying for a bed-and-breakfast license. 

On Sunday, I slyly threw out the question: “So, what in Berlin would you guys like to see?”  Cleverly expecting the answer: “Gosh, I don’t know!  Why don’t you just lead us to the conveniently nearby sights that you’ve already decided to take us to, you lazy lazy host?”

Instead I got: “Actually, I’d like to see the Sans Souci palace of Frederick the Great.”

Damn history-reading brother.

Sans Souci was Frederick the Great’s summer palace (we made the lame joke that his winter palace was called “Avec Souci” at least three times that day).  Frederick the Great was a 18th Century Prussian king who is “great” for presumably many reasons, though I suspect mostly because he introduced potatoes to Germany, and Germany to potatoes.  People apparently still visit his grave and place fresh potatoes on it.

Don’t laugh.  You can’t eat sausages with rice.

Anyways, Sans Souci has the disadvantages of being distant and popular, which means you need to trek out to it and get an appointment for a tour (in our case, for nearly three hours after we arrived).

But we did get to see it.  There’s a lot to like, especially if you like your palaces swirly.  But for me, the best part was the footwear.  As you go in, everyone is issued a pair of these size 20 slippers.  You can slip your shoes right inside. 

The stated reason is to help protect the floor.  But in size 20 slippers, you can’t walk.  All you can do is skate around.

A pack of tourists with their fanny packs and cameras and complaints and “I’m With Knut” baseball caps, all skating around like members of some discount ice capades troupe.  Set to the sounds of Frederick the Great’s Greatest Hits.

Please.  The slippers aren’t to help protect the floor.

Man, I had such a good time skating around the palace that it was all I could talk about today at work.  Finally somebody asked me what else I liked about the palace.

I thought really hard and gave my best ponder face.  “Um… did I mention that the slippers were gray?”

Ferfy Ferfi

My wallet bulged with vacation cellulite.  Smudged receipts, unusable currency, ripped tickets from subways, planes, trains (speedy and milk), taxis (water and land), buses, catamarans, ferries, and trams.

In our last hotel room of the trip, I performed a little liposuction on my wallet and wondered if maybe I’d overplanned.

No matter.  Today was a day to relax.  A vacation from the vacation.

My trusty guide to Eastern Europe (“Experience the culture like a local!” says the disingenous and smug little cover) had a lot to say about the wonders of Hungarian baths.  I believe the phrases “best experience in Budapest” and “restorative” both appeared.  Enough for me. 

It was also what Alvin zeroed in on immediately when I allowed him to look at the guidebook for a few minutes.  Did I overplan?  Is this what happens after you live in Germany for two years?

So we went.  I didn’t learn a lot of Hungarian during our short stay in Budapest, but I did learn that you can end a phone call with the word “hello” and I learned the word “ferfi.”  Ferfi means “male,” or “men,” or “man,” or something similarly useful that can help you avoid spa situations where you half-open a door and hear a sudden bullet “no-no-no-no-no.”

I also learned that I could live without the roast beef and lobster feelings of saunas and steam rooms, but I could soak indefinitely in water that is one degree below body temperature.  All the ripped ticket tensions went away. 

Ah, vacation.  

Ferfi, by the way, is also a good word to describe the way your hands look after spending four hours in the baths.

Confidence Intervals

On a bumpy bus through Croatia to the coast.

There I sat, bumping along, hot, uncomfortable, thinking about structural stability.  Coming to probable conclusions.  Windows are less stable than roofs.  Roofs are less stable than walls.  People are less stable than architecture.

Statistics requires a certain quorum of samples for confidence, but every third house was bombed out and unrebuilt.  Plenty of confidence.  Statistical confidence.  I´m told that there are other kinds of confidence, but these appear to be harder to achieve.